Valor... How immaculate you once was…
So beautiful and untainted…
Once, had you not been the valiant hero that brought joy to many…
Once, had you not been of Divinity…
Once, you were so beautiful, O Valor…
Now…
NOW, I IMMERSE MYSELF IN PROFANITY. I SEE NO GOOD TO ALL THOSE THAT OBEY THE CHAINS OF DIVINITY. YOU ALL ARE UNDESERVING OF MY MERCY…
But… Once, I had indeed loved… Once, I had indeed felt something… once, I was definitely human… Once, I had chosen the chains of Divinity for "them"… For them, I've done everything that was good… For them, I bore the name Valor, renouncing the name given to me… For them, I shed blood, sweat and tears for strangers that never really saw meaning to my existence… Despite all I did for them…
I was everything they ever wanted to be… The world was unkind to them… I wanted to be all they yearned to be… I want to be the beautiful apparition of all they desire… After all, the world has rid them of the ability to impose their desires upon reality…
I wasn't Valor… They were $Valor" and I was merely the tool that brought their desires into fruition… I bore that name for "them"
I was happy… I was in a world of bliss… All I ever wanted was to be their apparition… and to love "her"... I desired nothing more… Really, I sought nothing more than to bless the world with the kindness they were unable to bestow upon the world because the world chose to be cruel to them…
I HAD NO QUALMS WITH HAVING NOTHING AND BEING NOTHING… BUT HUMANS… HUMANS SAW WHAT I WASN'T… THEY SAW DESIRES I NEVER HAD, SAW ASPIRATIONS THAT NEVER CROSSED MY MIND… AND SAW SINS I HAD NEVER COMMITTED…
NEVER HAD I KILLED. DEFINITELY NOT MY ALLIES AND NOT EVEN MY ENEMIES THAT WERE VERY DESERVING OF DEATH… I HAD NEVER GRANTED ANY SOUL THE RELEASE FROM LIFE… I WAS WITHOUT SIN, FOR "THEY" WERE WITHOUT SIN…
Yet… They saw my sins. Accursed deeds that I knew not of.
I WAS FUCKING INNOCENT… I NEVER DID ANY OF THOSE HORRIBLE THINGS… I WAS BEING FRAMED… I SWEAR!
I begged… I cried… I threw my HONOR away… yet, "they" still didn't see the truth…
Those very "people" I did everything for, gave everything for… I GAVE UP EVERYTHING FOR THEM… I FUCKING GAVE UP MY BEAUTIFUL WIFE FOR THEM…
O, HOW MUCH SHE DESIRED ME… O, HOW MUCH SHE LOVED ME AND HOW MUCH I LOVED HER…
I wasn't even there when she died… Killed by those I thought to be "friends"...
She would have believed me… She would have never believed their lies… After all, they did murder her because the words she spread around…
Ofcourse, they didn't simply murder her… They did things I shan't ever describe, things beyond my greatest horror to her, the one person who loved me… Hahahahahahahahahahaha
I got tired… I got tired of trying to prove my innocence, of trying to get the image of her grotesque corpse defiled by BASTARDS out of my mind… I got tired of it all… I wanted a release too…
Profanity… it was my only release… I'm sorry, my love… Look what they've done to you… Look what they've made me become… I'm tired, my love… I'm very tired of it all…
*****
"What's that?!!"
The shrill cry of a woman sliced through the rushing crowd, halting people mid-stride as they fled the direction of the powerful explosion.
Heads whipped around despite themselves. Even those determined to keep moving felt an irresistible pull to look, toward something… beautiful.
"What is that thing?!"
"Is that a person?!"
"How can that be a person? That's an angel!"
"Don't look! Don't look, you'll go insane if you do!"
"We are saved, my dear people! The Lord has come to gather His children. That is indeed a man, my brothers and sisters!"
"The rambling of a fool! It's one of those devil's spawns! Run while it still ignores us!"
"No! That's our Lord and Savior!"
"You fools, run for your lives!"
"Y'all still have time to argue?! Get out of my way, I'm not taking that risk!"
"Don't be foolish, my people. Heed my words, brethren. The light is the way! We are saved!"
"Old man, drop the delusion and save yourself! Someone grab him before he gets himself killed!"
"Run! That's a devil's spawn! Don't be deceived by its beauty, the devil seduces with splendor!"
Far off, near the heart of the city, a colossal beam of golden light split the sky, tearing clouds apart as it speared downward toward a lone, golden-haired figure.
The figure floated motionless in that radiance, unconscious, body lifted as though by invisible hands. Higher and higher he drifted until the beam contracted, narrowing to a single pin of brilliance before vanishing altogether.
Weightless, the golden-haired man settled upright, as though the air beneath him had hardened into an unseen dais.
His eyes snapped open. Two molten suns, burning with a power that felt older than the world itself.
"I'd forgotten what it's like to have flesh, blood, and bone as the scaffolding of my form," he murmured, voice steeped in disdain. "Weak. Hideous. Uncomfortable… manageable, I suppose."
*****
Adrac clawed at the jagged debris pinning him, each motion sending fresh lances of agony through his mangled frame. The slab of concrete had nearly pulped him outright; only the last slick remnants of that strange, glassy film clinging to his skin kept him intact. It held him together like a grotesque adhesive, binding splintered bone and shredded muscle in a parody of wholeness.
A scream ripped from his throat–raw, animal.
AHHHHHHHHH—
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!
The words stayed inside, a frantic rhythm pounding against his skull as he forced himself to stop struggling. He tasted iron, heard the hammering of his own pulse. Pain could be smothered–if he could think. Thinking was the only weapon left.
Flight was useless. He wasn't going anywhere with a slab of concrete grinding his ribs like a mortar. Freedom was a cruel mirage.
That left him one card. Adaptation.
But even that came with a knife's edge.
Maliketh's warning echoed from memory: no two Adaptations are the same. The name might be universal, but the function… always personal, like fingerprints burned into the soul.
Adrac's own power had two cores.
The first, Uncontrolled: fast, instinctive, instantaneous. Perfect for battle, lethal in a heartbeat. But unpredictable. Like gambling with loaded dice.
The second, Controlled: precise, deliberate, shaped to need… but agonizingly slow. A death sentence when seconds mattered.
Speed wasn't the problem now. Survival was.
He ground his teeth until he tasted blood and triggered the Controlled aspect, surrendering to the slow, painful wait for change.
He had tried, once, to force both cores alive at once, but each demanded its own mental current. To split his mind in two… impossible.
Not far off lay Serkin.
Dust caked his body, the skin pale beneath a sheen of blood. He was motionless, neck twisted at an angle that spoke of fatal force, flesh torn away to reveal the pale arc of spine.
Then… spasms. A violent twitch ran through him, then another, until his body jerked upright with an unnatural speed. He collapsed forward into a fit of coughing, wet and ragged, each convulsion spraying blood onto the rubble. Nearly a minute passed before he could draw a steady breath.
His reddened eyes flicked across the ruin, wild and searching. He was a sight of pure devastation. Shirt gone, trousers shredded to rags. Deep gouges striped his flesh, some so deep that white bone glimmered through the crimson.
He sat in a dark, sticky pool of his own blood. Any ordinary man would have been long dead–if not from the trauma, then from the sheer ocean of blood lost. But Serkin's body was no ordinary shell. His Regeneration Factor tethered him to life, though it could not silence the gnawing hunger hollowing him out.
Thankfully, I boosted all stats, he thought, the notion a thin thread of comfort.
With a trembling finger he traced the gash across his abdomen, feeling the hot slickness of organs beneath. It should have horrified him. Instead, disturbingly, it almost… pleased.
"Regenerate."
The word left his lips like a command to reality itself. Bone set, flesh wove, skin sealed. In moments every mortal wound was gone, as if they had never been. Only the copper stench of blood, the sticky film on his skin, and the dark pool beneath bore witness to how close death had come.
He pushed to his feet, vertebrae popping back into place with a sharp crack. Hunger clawed deeper. Regeneration had healed the body, but it demanded a price.
Then… an explosion. Close enough to shake the ground. Dust swelled in a choking wave, and from within it a voice bellowed, furious and unmistakable.
"Serkin!"
"I can hear you damn clearly, you bastard!" Serkin shot back, fist curling, veins standing thick under his skin.
A shadow took shape.
Adrac but… changed.
He loomed nearly eight feet tall, muscles layered in grotesque density, veins mapping his limbs like molten circuitry. His eyes burned a deep, unnatural red. Not a single wound marred him.
Adaptation healed him? Serkin's jaw tightened. What did he gain that could do that? A fucking Healing Factor?!
Yet even through the fury, Serkin caught the faint tremor in Adrac's hulking frame–a leftover spasm from whatever transformation had saved him.
"What have we done?" Adrac's voice cracked suddenly, the fire in his eyes dimming to a ghostly white.
"Huh?" Serkin narrowed his gaze, Rift Slash coiled in readiness.
"Are you blind, Serkin?!" Adrac's arms swept wide, trembling. "Look what we've done!"
Only then did Serkin see.
Only then did the ruin truly register. The full, merciless clarity of what they had wrought.
The world was ash and ruin. Buildings lay in splintered heaps, steel and stone twisted into blackened ribs jutting toward a colorless sky. Streets stretched like graveyards, littered with the crushed and the torn–bodies mangled beneath collapsing towers or shredded by the shockwaves the two of them had unleashed. The stench of scorched dust and blood was a living thing, thick enough to taste.
"This was your fault, Adrac!" Serkin's voice shook with rage, but guilt weighed heavier on his chest than fury ever could.
"I… I did this?" Adrac stared at his hands as though they were hexed, as though each finger still pulsed with the memory of destruction.
"Who else?!"
Serkin wanted no part in any of it. He had never meant to touch the lives of strangers; never meant to turn a city into a mass grave. Their fight had been a test of power, nothing more. Yet now the scar of their duel stretched across the horizon, and the cold knowledge of it seeped into his bones like winter water.
What have we done? The thought slithered through him, a slow poison he could not expel no matter how fiercely he tried to lay the blame on Adrac.
"I don't want to fight anymore," Adrac said at last, his voice drained of everything–anger, pride, even fear.
"Fuck no. After this? You think you can just walk away? Look at them!" Serkin's shout cracked the silence, but the devastation around them swallowed the echo.
"What do you want me to do, Serkin?!" Adrac's reply came like a snap of breaking glass. "I can't bring them back. They're dead, and I know it's my fault. I feel it, whether you believe me or not. But if we keep going, more will die. Let it end here."
Serkin's grip on his power tightened until his knuckles blanched. Rift energy prickled against his palm, begging release. He could kill Adrac here. He knew it. But he also knew Adrac could crush his skull in the same breath. The stalemate held, brittle as spun glass.
Then the sky itself broke.
A spear of golden light knifed through the clouds, tearing them into a violent spiral. The air bent around its descent, a pressure so immense it made the bones in Serkin's face ache. When it struck the earth, the world flinched–a soundless concussion that rattled the ruins and set every nerve screaming.
That had been only moments ago.
Now Adrac hovered effortlessly above the rubble, his blood-spattered figure suspended on nothing. Serkin followed, bracing himself on invisible planes of compressed space, their combined presence like two sparks in a sea of ash. Together they faced the one who had arrived.
The newcomer stood at the epicenter of the golden impact. His hair burned like hammered gold; his eyes, twin furnaces of molten orange, turned the darkness to trembling shadow.
"Who are you?" Serkin demanded, forcing steadiness into a voice ragged from battle and guilt. The thought of another Chosen stepping into their carnage was almost unbearable.
The stranger's gaze swept over them with a slowness that felt deliberate, ancient—a weight older than the broken world around them. When he finally spoke, his voice was quiet enough to chill marrow.
"Valor."
Reality itself shuddered. Invisible seams split the air, leaking a chorus of unearthly howls, sounds that clawed at the mind, twisting reason into screaming static.
The sky blackened to pitch. Thunderheads coiled into existence, swallowing the last traces of light. The first thunderclap came like a cannon, and through its dying echo the voice returned, cold and inexorable:
"I am Valor… the Broken."